Secondary duties could be a source of much innocent fun, if you played the system!
For example, for the Gateway I used to demand 3 days off per month to do the editing, layouts and check the final galleys from the printer. Boss was happy with that - but whether or not I actually did the work then was something he didn't need to know.
We ran a spoof so sucessful about the BAe146P as a 'low observable' special duties jet with 'A Radio Frequency Illumination Limiting Loop' (A RFIL loop) in the April edition that Air Clues ran with the story and pinched the photo of a couple of lads fiddling with a broomstick painted white stuck on top of the BAe 146 development flight's jet. I had to ring them up and point out that 'A RFIL loop' was an anagram....
Much mirth at the UAS when I was the Fire Officer. I requested a survey of our building from the Command Fire people and they went nuts! It was a death trap. So I produced a long list of issues for the boss to deal with.... Soon afterwards someone else took over as Sqn Fire Officer.
Silliest was 'Squadron Sports Officer'. Someone was clearly taking the pi$$. But the UAS people at Cranwell kept hosing us down with dosh, because our scale of entitlement was based on the number of students we had. Real rugby shirts for the team, 'spectator facilities' (bench and table sets for the barbecue really), ceramic hockey sticks, competition rugby balls, full sets of cricket gear - you name it, we had it! Horrid Kevball shirts had been ordered by my predecessor, but as Stop Start will recall, we decided that Kevball was not an appropriate game for potential young officers, so they remained firmly under lock and key!
At Brize, my Sqn boss used to vet the squadron's Gateway submission written by a chum. Which I took rather a dim view of - and often ran the original instead. The boss never noticed......
I only had one of those stupid Officers Mess secondary duties once - Silver Member at Wattisham. Trying to reconcile the hoard of dented plunder and 'borrowed items' in the silver store with the property book was a total nightmare - we had loads more than the book said we had! 56(F) used to volunteer for quite a few mess secondary duties, much to the surprise of OC Eng, the PMC. Being non-aircrew, he hadn't noticed that we consequently had a huge majority whenever the Mess Committee needed to make a decision.....
